No upsets in Hays County’s gerrymandered Congress, State Senate seats

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat, denounces U.S. Congressional districts reshaped by the GOP-controlled Legislature during last year’s redistricting shakeup. With his win on Tuesday over former San Marcos Mayor Susan Narvaiz, the Republican nominee, Doggett has survived yet another attempt by Texas Republicans to gerrymander him out of the U.S. House of Representatives. TEXAS TRIBUNE PHOTO by JUSTIN DEHN

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STAFF REPORT

Tuesday’s unfolding election returns yielded no surprise finishes in any of three U.S. Congress districts that overlap Hays County nor in either of the county’s two Texas Senate districts.

That there were no surprises should come as no surprise.

All three of the county’s U.S. House seats and both of its Texas Senate seats lie in districts with almost insurmountable advantages for one party or the other. Those that include western parts of the county (CD-25, CD-21 and SD-25) are Republican locks; those that include the eastside (CD-35 and SD-21) are Democratic strongholds.

In eastern Hays County, former San Marcos Mayor Susan Narvaiz, a Republican, was defeated soundly by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, to represent newly created CD-35, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio along the Interstate 35 and Texas 130 corridor.

Doggett won 105,260 votes (64 percent) to Narvaiz’s 52,686 (32 percent); a Libertarian and a Green Party candidate split the remaining four percent.

In the portion of Hays that falls in the district — the most solidly Democratic boxes in the county — Navaiz won 8,218 votes (39.5 percent) to Doggett’s 11,651 (56 percent). Doggett won Travis, Bexar and Caldwell counties by huge margins while Narvaiz carried Comal and Guadalupe counties.

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the powerful House judiciary committee, carried his San Antonio-based CD-21 with 60.6 percent of 307,856 votes. In Hays County, Smith picked up 9,096 votes (55.1 percent) of 16,503 Hays County residents who voted in CD-21.

In CD-25, which includes roughly the western half of Hays County, former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, a Weatherford Republican, gathered 58.5 percent of the votes in his far-flung district, which meanders from the edge of Fort Worth to the caliche backroads of Wimberley and subdvisions of Dripping Springs. In the Hays County part of the district, Williams won 12,581 votes (61.7 percent) to Democrat Elaine M. Henderson’s 6,750 (33.1 percent) and Libertarian Betsy Dewey’s 1,059 (5.2 percent).

Most of Hays County, meanwhile, will be represented in the Texas Senate by emergency room physician and Tea Party figurehead Donna Campbell, who moved to New Braunfels from Columbus little more than a year ago to run in Senate District 25 against State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, whom she bested in the primary runoff this summer.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Laredo Democrat, easily won re-election in Senate District 21, which includes a sliver of Hays County mostly east of Interstate 35. The senator won 67.6 percent districtwide over Republican Grant Rostig and Libertarian Joseph Morse. In Hays County, Zaffirini took 6,612 votes (59.5 percent).